If the means employed to bring the peace about were feeble, and in one respect contemptible, those employed to break the negotiation were strong and formidable. As soon as the first suspicion of a treaty’s being on foot crept abroad in the world the whole alliance united with a powerful party in the nation to obstruct it. From that hour to the moment the Congress of Utrecht finished, no one measure possible to be taken was omitted to traverse every advance that was made in this work, to intimidate, to allure, to embarrass every person concerned in it. This was done without any regard either to decency or good policy, and from hence it soon followed that passion and humour mingled themselves on each side. A great part of what we did for the peace, and of what others did against it, can be accounted for on no other principle. The Allies were broken among themselves before they began to treat with the common enemy. The matter did not mend in the course of the treaty, and France and Spain, but especially the former, profited of this disunion. Whoever makes the comparison, which I have touched upon, will see the true reasons which rendered the peace less answerable to the success of the war than it might and than it ought to have been. Judgment has been passed in this case as the different passions or interests of men have inspired them. But the real cause lay in the constitution of our Ministry, and much more in the obstinate opposition which we met with from the Whigs and from the Allies. However, sure it is that the defects of the peace did not occasion the desertions from the Tory party which happened about this time, nor those disorders in the Court which immediately followed. Long before the purport of the treaties could be known, those Whigs who had set out with us in 1710 began to relapse back to their party. They had among us shared the harvest of a new Ministry, and, like prudent persons, they took measures in time to have their share in that of a new Government. The whimsical or the Hanover Tories continued zealous in appearance with us till the peace was signed. I saw no people so eager for the conclusion of it. Some of them were in such haste that they thought any peace preferable to the least delay, and omitted no instances to quicken their friends who were actors in it. As soon as the treaties were perfected and laid before the Parliament, the scheme of these gentlemen began to disclose itself entirely. Their love of the peace, like other passions, cooled by enjoyment. They grew nice about the construction of the articles, could come up to no direct approbation, and, being let into the secret of what was to happen, would not preclude themselves from the glorious advantage of rising on the ruins of their friends and of their party.